In Berlin, where the Jews had been expelled in 1510, Leopold (Lippold) was a physician and favorite of the Margrave Joachim II of Brandenburg. After the death of his master he was accused of having poisoned him and executed in 1573. A new refuge was opened to the Jews in Holland, when this country gained its independence from Spain. A family of fugitive Marranos is said to have been driven to Emden, Hanover, by unfavorable winds, and thence they were advised to go to Amsterdam (1593). Moses ben Uri of Emden followed them and instructed them in Judaism. Some other converts followed, among them monks, statesmen and scholars. One of the most prominent rabbis of Amsterdam was Menasseh ben Israel, who in 1654, tried to obtain from Cromwell official permission for the Jews to resettle in England, whence they had been expelled in 1290. A bill introduced into Parliament for the readmission failed to pass, but prominent jurists rendered an opinion that the expulsion was not a legal act. The Jews already in London were not molested, opened a synagogue and acquired a cemetery in 1660. Charles II was favorable to the Jews, some of whom had assisted him financially before he had ascended the throne; in 1664 he confirmed their right of residence.
About the middle of the seventeenth century a colony of Marranos from Amsterdam settled in Brazil, which was then under Dutch rule. When the Portuguese reconquered it (1654) the Jews were expelled and settled in the Dutch West Indies and New York, then New Amsterdam. Governor Stuyvesant objected to their landing, but the directors of the West India Company, among whom there were several Jews, overruled his decision. Meantime the Jews had settled in Rhode Island, where Roger Williams had promulgated full religious freedom in 1657.
In Amsterdam the Portuguese community combined strict traditional piety with secular learning and great commercial activity. To the Portuguese Jews, Amsterdam owes its importance as the center of the diamond trade. Uriel Acosta, who held high office in Spain and emigrated to Holland in order to openly profess Judaism, became imbued with deistic ideas, was tried as a heretic and did penance. Then, excommunicated as a backslider, he became despondent and, having attempted to kill Rabbi Saul Morteira, committed suicide in 1640. Baruch or Benedict Spinoza (1633-1677) was also excommunicated, but disregarded all attempts to bring him back to Judaism. He is the originator of a famous system of philosophy, called Pantheism or Monism, laid down in his principal work, the “Ethics.” He also occupies a prominent place in the history of Biblical Criticism through his work, “Tractatus Theologico Politicus.”
In 1666, the year which the Christian Millenarians regarded as Messianic by reason of a passage in Revelation xiii, 18, Judaism was stirred by Sabbatai Zebi of Smyrna, who proclaimed himself the Messiah. Expelled from that city he went to Egypt, where he received the enthusiastic support of Raphael Joseph, a wealthy tax-farmer. In Palestine, whither he went, he found many admirers, and the prophet, Nathan of Gaza, proclaimed him the true Messiah. Being denounced for high treason, Sabbatai was brought to Constantinople and imprisoned in the fort of Abydos, but the means supplied by his followers enabled him to hold court like a prince. Everywhere in Europe the majority of the Jews believed him to be the Messiah. The representatives of the Jews in Poland sent two prominent rabbis as a committee to him, but Nehemiah Hakohen, the Polish Kabbalist, who had come to ascertain the truth, denounced him as an impostor. Sabbatai Zebi was brought before the Sultan to answer a charge of high treason; and, in order to save his life, he turned to Islam. The Sultan gave him an office, and for ten years, until his death, he remained in contact with the Jews. Many of his followers turned to Islam, and still exist as a special sect called Donmah in Salonica. Others of his followers who remained true to Judaism formed a mystic community, which adopted the name of Hasidim. They were excommunicated by the most prominent rabbis, but progressed rapidly, although many of them were unmasked as frauds. Nehemiah Hayon, an Oriental, wrote a book in which he taught the doctrine of the Trinity (1712) and Jacob Frank, a Polish Jew, formed a Judæo-Christian sect. The latter was supported by those who wished to convert the Jews to Christianity, and lived in princely style in Offenbach, where he died in 1793.
The center of Hasidism was in Podolia and Volhynia; Israel Besht, 1695-1760, may be considered as its founder. His work was continued by his disciples, among whom Baer Mezdzyrzecz (1700-1772) was the most prominent. Later Nahman of Bratzlav (1779-1810) developed the theory of miraculous powers of healing granted to favored individuals and the mystic interpretation of the Bible and the Rabbinic commands. They still have a great number of devotees in parts of Austrian and Russian Poland.
Persecutions in the seventeenth century are of rarer occurrence than in former times. The most serious one was that which, with several interruptions, lasted from 1648 to 1655, and the leader of which was the Cossack captain Chmelnicki. The Cossacks, who were under the sovereignty of the Polish king, rebelled against their masters, and the Jews had to suffer, partly because they were unable to protect themselves, and partly because, as tax-farmers, they had been the instrument of the extortion practised by the Polish nobles. Thousands were massacred, and since that time the 20th of Sivan is observed as a fast-day in Poland. They fled in all directions, and many great Talmudists among them became rabbis in Western Europe.
The Jesuits in Poland and in those places where the Catholic Church had succeeded in crushing the Reformation became very powerful and fostered hatred of the Jews, often resulting in mob violence. In 1664 such a massacre occurred in Lemberg. The Jews were accused of the murder of Christians; similar charges were often made. In 1659 two prominent Jews were put to death on Rosh Hashanah in Rossieny, Lithuania, under the charge of ritual murder; in 1694 Lazarus Abeles and a friend of his were imprisoned in Prague, charged with having killed the son of Abeles, who wanted to become a Christian. Abeles hanged himself and his friend was cruelly put to death. In Vienna and Prague mission services, which the Jews were compelled to attend every Sabbath, were held by the Jesuits since 1630. In 1670 Emperor Leopold I expelled the Jews from Vienna, influenced partly by the hatred of the citizens and partly by the bigotry of the Empress, a Spanish princess. Some of the refugees were given permission by the Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg to settle in Berlin. At about the same time Halle, Halberstadt and Dessau were opened to them. In 1670 Herz Levi of Metz was accused of having murdered a Christian child and was put to death. His innocence was afterwards proved.
Peculiar to the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the court Jews, Hof-Jude, Hof-factor, Minister-Resident. Prominent among them were Elijah Gomperz of Cleve, Moses Benjamin Wolf of Dessau, Jost Libman of Berlin, Behrendt Lehman of Dresden, and Samuel Oppenheimer and Samson Wertheimer of Vienna. These Jews did service as jewelers, bankers, general brokers and army contractors, and, as such, were exempt from Jewish taxes and certain disabilities. They possessed great influence, which they used to good advantage for their fellow-Jews. Samuel Oppenheimer, who died in 1703, obtained from Emperor Leopold an order of confiscation of an anti-Jewish book, “Entdecktes Judenthum,” by J. A. Eisenmenger (1700), which, up to date, has served as a repertory for anti-Semitic writers.
In 1614 a serious riot broke out in Frankfort-on-the-Main, led by the guilds, which accused the patricians controlling the municipal council of partiality to the Jews. The council, aided by imperial troops, succeeded in suppressing the rebellion after considerable difficulty. Vincent Fettmilch, the leader, was quartered, his home demolished, and his family expelled from the city. Other ringleaders were beheaded. While the city council thus showed its sincere intention to have the law respected even with regard to the Jews, the new legal regulation for the Jews of Frankfort, “Juden-Staettigkeit,” was a specimen of mediæval ideas, maintaining the usual restrictions on occupation, marriage, residence and quite a number of measures, like the yellow badge, meant to disgrace a Jew. It remained in force until 1807.
The political condition of the Jews at this time nevertheless shows steady improvement, although their threatened expulsion from the city of Metz and their actual expulsion from Vienna and the province of Lower Austria in 1670 were a relapse into the conditions of the fifteenth century. Still, such events are local and few and far between; on the other hand, an improvement is manifest in various instances where Jews were admitted to countries or cities from which they had been expelled in mediæval times. Particularly important was their settlement in Hamburg and Berlin at this time. In Hamburg the municipal council gave to some Portuguese Marranos, who came there to escape from the Inquisition, the right of residence in spite of clerical protest. The first settlers were soon followed by Jews from Germany in the course of the seventeenth century, and finally (1710), they formed a legally-organized congregation. Similarly Portuguese Jews had found a haven of refuge in various cities of Southern France, although there in a Catholic country they had to conceal their Judaism.